Robert felt poorly after dinner, but he refused to let Lesley summon Dr Joyce. Willie helped him upstairs to his room and made him comfortable in his bed, propping him up against his pillows. He gave Robert his sleeping tablet and a glass of water.
‘I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep,’ said Robert, his breathing laboured. ‘I’m organising a trip for us to go up Penang Hill one of these mornings. We used to take a bungalow up there during the hot months. Lesley and our boys loved it.’
‘She’s been telling … me about Ethel Proudlock,’ Willie said from the armchair at the foot of the bed.
Robert looked blankly at him for two or three seconds. ‘Oh, not that tawdry business. Nobody wants all that muck raked up again.’ His breathing had eased. ‘Ethel Proudlock,’ he murmured. ‘Haven’t heard that name in years … The way they treated her … her husband and her own father, what they did to her … they should’ve been hanged … and we should have said something …’
Willie was suddenly alert, paying close attention. ‘What are you talking about, Robert?’ He got up and went over to the bedside. ‘Robert? What did they do to Ethel?’
But Robert had closed his eyes and was snoring contentedly away. Willie watched him for a few moments, then gently removed his spectacles from his face and placed them on the nightstand. He backed out of the room quietly and closed the door. He left the light on for his friend.
Going downstairs to join Lesley on the verandah, his mind continued to puzzle over Robert’s words. What the devil did he mean? He fixed himself a whisky and sat across from Lesley.
‘He’s nodded off,’ said Willie. He told her what Robert had said about Ethel Proudlock. ‘Do you know what he meant?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’ She contemplated the ceiling. ‘Ethel didn’t get on with her father, but I never heard her say anything bad about him. And William, well, he adored Ethel. He would never have done anything to hurt her.’
The night was hot and humid, shrill with cicadas. Somewhere a dog howled once, then fell silent.
‘Gerald’s gone into town,’ said Lesley.
‘I’d be more surprised if he had not.’
‘It doesn’t upset you?’
He heard the real question beneath the one she was asking. ‘He’s young and full of beans.’ He shrugged. ‘Whoever he meets out there, whatever he does, he’ll always … come home to me in the morning. Usually the worse for wear, but he’ll … come home.’
‘And what if, one day, he decides not to come home?’
He peered into his glass as though he was staring into a deep, bottomless well. He said nothing.
‘Did you know Robert’s homosexual?’ asked Lesley.
Slowly he looked up from his glass. ‘He never gave me any … indication.’
‘Oh, come on, Willie, you two shared rooms for, what, eight, nine months? And he must’ve known about you, surely.’
‘It was never … mentioned between us,’ he said. ‘Not even … obliquely.’
‘How does your wife feel about you and Gerald?
It was really none of her business, and he had no intention of discussing it with her. The affronted expression on his face did not deter her, however. ‘Does she have affairs?’
‘I’ve never cared to ask.’
‘But the thought occasionally crawls into your mind, doesn’t it? Oh, don’t look so sanctimonious.’ Anger flared up in her. ‘You know what? I hope she does sleep with other men, men who can give her some pleasure, make her feel she’s desirable and desired. Make her feel like a normal woman. It’s the least she deserves, don’t you think?’
Willie rose to his feet with a rigid dignity. ‘Goodnight, Lesley,’ he said coldly, and went inside the house.
She came upon him in the library when she was going through the house locking the doors and putting out the lights. He was on his favourite leather sofa, a book open on his lap. They looked at each other, and then she walked across the silence between them to stand before him.
Willie closed his book, shifted to one side and indicated the space next to him. She sat down, adjusting her skirt over her knees. He caught a faint trace of her perfume, mingled with the smell of her. It was a familiar smell to him by now, and it was not unpleasant.
‘You’re the only one I’ve ever spoken to about this … this matter, Willie.’ Her voice sounded strained; there was no trace left of her earlier anger. ‘You’re the only one to whom I can speak about it. For ten years now I’ve said nothing to anyone about Robert’s … preference. It hasn’t been easy keeping it to myself. It hasn’t been easy at all.’
‘Syrie has never met Gerald,’ said Willie. ‘But she has made sure he’s not allowed to step foot into England again, ever.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Gerald was deported from England two years ago. “Undesirable alien.” My darling wife,’ he said acidly, ‘does not lack friends in lofty perches – her father’s Thomas … Barnardo, and she used to be married to Henry Wellcome. I have not the slightest doubt she called in some favours, dripped her poison into a … few powerful ears.’
‘Why do you homosexuals do it?’ She seemed resigned, shrunken. ‘Why do you marry us when you’d sooner hop into bed with a man?’
Willie’s reply, when it came, was silted with the sorrow of the world. ‘What other choice do we have?’
‘No one would think it the tiniest bit out of the ordinary at all if men like you remained bachelors all your life.’
‘After what happened to poor … Oscar Wilde?’ He shook his head. ‘The world has turned against us, Lesley. You don’t know what it’s like to live in fear all … the time, knowing that at any moment you could be exposed, your entire … life destroyed. By marrying Robert, you have given him a haven. You have kept him safe from speculation and gossip. But most of all, safe from … being locked up in gaol.’
‘We’re wives, Willie,’ said Lesley. ‘Not martyrs.’
He had no reply to that, and so he said, ‘Tell me what happened to Ethel.’